Billing for your sweet shop and bakery in Punjab
Rewri by the handful, laddu by the kilo and a wedding order on one page, all on your phone.
Why a Punjab sweet shop's back room, laddus in elevens and weekly pinni order each keep their own count
Gajak and rewri made in the back room, sold in packets in the front
In the cold weeks the shop's own back room turns out gajak and rewri from sugar, jaggery and sesame, and the front counter packs them for the Lohri crowd. The weight made on a given day and the packets sold at the counter are two different counts, and the packets that were opened to give a taste go into neither. The helper who tastes a piece of each batch to check it is the only one who knows how much that comes to.
Laddus counted in elevens and fifty-ones, not by the kilo
For an engagement or a naming, a family asks for eleven, twenty-one or fifty-one laddus, counted by the piece and not weighed. Next to them another customer asks for half a kilo of the same laddu. The same sweet is sold by the piece to one and by the weight to the other, and your helper has to remember which rate belongs to which. The family counts the laddus again at home.
Pinni for a new mother, ordered every week for weeks
When a new mother is at home, her family comes to the shop each week for kilos of pinni, and the order is the same every time. The shop packs it, a helper carries it home, and each week someone asks what has been sent so far. The only answer is a slip that was torn when the family changed hands. Nobody wants to ask a family twice.
Tools that fit a halwai's counter in Punjab
Bills on your phone
A tray of fifty-one laddus is one line on the bill, counted as a tray, and nobody counts out fifty-one pieces at the counter. The bill is on the family's WhatsApp before they carry the tray out.
Daily reports
Which sweet sold out first on each day of the Lohri week, kept so you can open it next year.
Credit book (khata)
A page for the wedding family that takes its shagun boxes in three lots before the day, each lot dated, settled after the wedding.
From the gajak made at dawn to the last week of the pinni order
Gajak and rewri counted when made and again as the packets go
Put the kilos made into stock on the morning they are made. Each packet on a bill takes its weight off. At night the count shows what is on the counter, and a packet opened for a taste is a number you can see. The batch you made on Monday does not hide behind the one you made on Tuesday.
Trays of eleven, twenty-one and fifty-one, each a ready line
Make a tray of eleven, a tray of twenty-one and a tray of fifty-one laddus three items, each with a rate you set once. When a family names its number, the helper picks the tray, and the bill says what was counted into the box. Evening stock shows how many of each tray are made up.
The weekly pinni order, every delivery written on the family's page
A new mother's family orders the same weight of pinni every week for weeks. Open a page in the family's name and put each week's pinni on it as a bill with its date. When someone asks what has been sent so far, you count the weeks on the page and read out the weights.
Ghee, trade and the sweet counter in Punjab
A sweet counter in Punjab sits at the end of a long chain of ghee, milk and trade.
- Patiala district makes vanaspati ghee, power cables, bicycles and dairy products; large units such as HUL and Bunge are at Rajpura.
- The closing of the Attari trade check post after the Pahalgam attack ended a major source of income for Amritsar, hitting trade and jobs (December 2025).
Questions a Punjab halwai asks
How do I know how many trays of fifty-one went in the wedding weeks?
Make the fifty-one tray its own item. The day's report shows how many trays went each day, so you read the wedding weeks and plan the next season's trays from them.
Gajak sells hard in the Lohri weeks and the cake counter is quiet. Can I read the two counters across the year?
Yes. Gajak and cakes are separate items, so the daily report keeps each one's days. Open the Lohri weeks and the quiet weeks and read the two lines side by side.
The office sends a box of sweets for every visitor and pays on the first. Can each visitor's day be on the bill?
Yes. Give the office a page, and put each box on it as a bill with the day the visitor came. On the first the office has one page with a line for every day a box went out.
Festival sweets of Amritsar
In Amritsar only a couple of shops still make sugar toys (khand de khidone), as demand is now limited to festival times, a traditional sweetmaker said. A maker of such a small lot can write on the day the pieces made and the pieces sold, and the two numbers at night are the day's whole account.
Amritsar's Bhadbhunjiyan Wala Bazaar sells batashe, phuliyan, bhuji dal de laddu, khand de murundey and gur de murundey, which people buy for puja. Such sweets are weighed out by the kilo, so each one is an item with its own rate.